Board of Editors

Nathan W. Ackerman, M.D.
Alex Bavelas, Ph.D.
Gregory Bateson, M.A.
Don D. Jackson, M.D.

Board of Advisory Editors (Tentative List)

Robert Bales, Ph.D.
Eugene MacDanald, M.D.
John Bell, Ph.D.
David Mendell, M.D.
Donald A. Bloch, M.D.
Wilbur Schramm, Ph.D.
Murray Bowen, M.D.
Morris Schwart, Ph.D.
John Bowlby, M.D.
John Spiegel, M.D.
Eric Erickson
Paul Sivadon, M.D.
Nathan Epstein, M.D.
Paul Wallin, Ph.D.
W. Ronald D. Fairbairn, M.D.
John H. Weakland
Melvin Kohn, Ph.D.
William A. Westley, Ph.D.
Theodore Lidz, M.D.
Lymann Wynne, M.D.

Family: Journal for the Study and Treatment of Group Interaction

The emphasis in psychiatry and psychology has been shifting in recent years from the study of the individual to the study of his relationships with other people. Inevitably a focus upon inter-personal dynamics leads to an appreciation of the human family as a source of mental health and of psychopathology. There is a need for a professional journal devoted to research and clinical data on the interaction within families and the methods and results in the rapidly expanding field of family therapy.

The proposed journal will publish Material on the following areas of research on the human family:

• The relationship between types of individual psychopathology and types of families. Many clinicians throughout the world are investigating the function of individual symptom. in the family context where the symptoms become manifest. A dozen separate research projects in America are studying schizophrenia with the hypothesis that it is a Manifestation of a particular kind of family interaction. Investigations are being conducted on the connection between psychosomatic illness and family dynamics with most emphasis currently upon the relationship between asthmatic children and their families. Similarly in popular and pro- fessional publications there is an increasing focus upon the family of the delinquent as a causal factor in delinquent behavior. The idea that a disturbed child comes from a disturbed family has been extended to an interest in whether the disturbed adult is not also involved in disturbed family relations. The proposed journal will bring together in one place the various studies which examine particular kinds of psychopathology as they are related to particular kinds of family systems.
• Family diagnosis and treatment. The examination and treatment of the family rather than merely the individual is a relatively new development in psychiatry. In traditional psycho- therapy it was not uncommon to acknowledge the importance of the family setting in the treatment program of the individual, but only recently have there been actual attempts to treat the family. Currently family therapy is being conducted at a number of places in America and Europe an well as in Japan and India. These methods of family treatment range from individual psychotherapy with all family members to treatment where the family is seen by the therapist only as a group. In the past many psychiatric centers would treat a disturbed child only if the parents also received psychotherapy, and currently this idea has been extended to more mature patients. The proposed journal would welcome, and encourage, reports of experiences by therapists treating married couples, treating families in collaborative therapy, and treating families as a group.
• Cultural differences in family organization. When the family is conceived of as a disturbed system in contrast to other family systems, the question of cultural deviance is immediately raised. Anthropological studies of families in different cultures as well as studies of differences in the sub-strata of any one culture are relevant to the study of disturbed families. In America the effects of cultural change upon the family unit are being studied by research men in anthropology, sociology, social psychology, and allied fields such as Mass communications research Investi- ations are being made of the effect of the mass media upon the family as well studies of the portrayal of families in the drama of the mass media. Cultural change. relevant to disturbances in families are the shifting status of women, the social mobility of families, the geographical shifting of family members, and the increasing longevity of parents. The proposed journal will provide a single source of information on studies of families in different cultures as well as the effects of cultural change upon family structure in any one culture.
• The expanded family. The fact that every individual learns how to organize with others from the type of family organization in which he matures has profound effects upon the kinds of social institutions he create. From the clinical point of view, studies are available on mental hospital structure and organization as an extended family for the patient. Not only are doctors and nurses likely to become parental figures, but the patient is likely to influence the total hospital system to relate to him in ways similar to his family patterns. The transference patterns in individual and group psychotherapy are also analyzable in terms of an extended family of the patient.

  From the cultural point of view, the organization of business and government is inevitably influenced by the kind of family organization in a particular culture. Studies of paternalistic industry and maternalistic societies suggest how often. family terminology as well as ideas of family organization influence the cultural structure of society. The shift in business organization from authoritarian leadership to committee and conference leader-ship would presumably be related to shifts in family organization. Just as family organization will influence national political structure, so will the political structure influence the family, as is apparent in an extreme way in China at the moment. In the international field as well, the "family" of nations will interact with each other in ways related to the patterns of interaction in the individual families of these nations. The proposed journal will welcome articles dealing with the reciprocal effects of family organ- ization on treatment and other social institutions as well as national and international organization and conflicts.

• Attempts to find a theoretical model for family interaction. Although there are many models, or analogies, for the processes within an individual there are few models for his interaction with other people. We can describe a~n individual in terms of instinctual drives, repressing forces, and so on, but we lack descriptive terms for the process which takes place when two or more people relate to each other. There is an increasing attempt to develop models for interpersonal relations by those in the psychiatric field, social psychologists, mathematicians and ethnologists. Such attempts range from communication models for simple animal behavior to mathematical models of hypothetical entities in Games Theory. The continuing study of the interaction in small groups in social psychology is also providing material which should lead to theoretical models for the study of interaction in family groups. The proposed journal will welcome and encourage attempts to formally describe the interaction of entities, whether they be points in a circuit, animals, or human beings. Rigorous small group description will have wide applicability.
• The journal will also provide specialized bibliographies in the general field of family study, an abstracting service to bring together the information relevant to families which is scattered throughout the literature, and a book review section to cover the increasing number of publications in the field of family study and treatment.